Love, Friendship, and Art

A letter Ansel Adams, an icon of landscape photography, sent to his friend Cedric Wright on June 10, 1937

Dear Cedric,

A strange thing happened to me today. I saw a big thundercloud move down over Half Dome, and it was so big and clear and brilliant that it made me see many things that were drifting around inside of me; things that relate to those who are loved and those who are real friends.

For the first time I know what love is; what friends are; and what art should be.

Love is a seeking for a way of life; the way that cannot be followed alone; the resonance of all spiritual and physical things….

Friendship is another form of love — more passive perhaps, but full of the transmitting and acceptances of things like thunderclouds and grass and the clean granite of reality.

Art is both love and friendship and understanding: the desire to give. It is not charity, which is the giving of things. It is more than kindness, which is the giving of self. It is both the taking and giving of beauty, the turning out to the light of the inner folds of the awareness of the spirit. It is a recreation on another plane of the realities of the world; the tragic and wonderful realities of earth and men, and of all the interrelations of these.

Ansel

Moment of Zen

The thirty spokes unite in the one center; but it is on the empty space for the axle that the use of the wheel depends. Clay is fashioned into vessels; but it is on their empty hollowness that their use depends. The door and windows are cut out from the walls to form an apartment; but it is on the empty space that its use depends. Therefore, whatever has existence serves for profitable adaptation, and what does not have existence for actual usefulness.
- Lao Tzu
Tao Ching, (The Book of Changes)

Happy New Year

2007 was a memorable year both for me and the world in general, especially in the way the green revolution has taken off. However, it was a slow year for this blog. Even though, as an optimist, I am looking forward to a great year in 2008, and looking forward to sharing more of my thoughts and views on this blog; I feel 2008 might be a very challenging year.

This could be a year where we face more issues related to our destruction of the environment, more extinctions, more global conflicts along the lines of religion and race, and more economic turmoils due to a degrading dollar and shift of economic growth from west to east. But, I hope everyone can come together, think and work as one, to solve problems which are common to all of us, and make it the year humanity decided to make a quantum leap.

I wish all of you a 2008 which is not just about happiness, but about making revolutionary changes. Enjoy the wallpaper and Good Karma!

Moment of Zen

“Happy are those who give without remembering and receive without forgetting”
-Anonymous

via a comment in The Builder by Shekhar Kapur.

Moment of Zen

Koi dam ka mehman hun ai ahle mehfil/ Charaagh-e-sehar hun bujhnaa chaahta hun/ Meri hawa men rahegi khayaal ki bijli Yeh musht-e-khaaq hai faani, rahe na rahe

‘O friends of the gathering, I am just a guest of the last few breaths/ I’m a lamp of the morning about to burn out/ My ideas will fly in the winds like the flashes of lightening/ My body is only a heap of dust, it may or may not be there.
- Bhagat Singh - reportedly written in a letter hours before being hanged

via Tehelka

Good-bye: An interesting Etymology

Good-bye

Etymology: alteration of God be with you

That sure can put an atheist in a dilemma!

Moment of Zen

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then, is not an act, but a habit.”
- Aristotle

via zen habits

Disposable

It’s pretty amazing that our society has reached a point where the effort necessary to extract oil from the ground, ship it a refinery, turn it into plastic, shape it appropriately, truck it to a shore, buy it, and bring it home; is considered less effort than what it takes to just wash the spoon when you’re done with it.
-via TreeHugger

Mass production of disposable products for our convenience is the norm of the times. The more a society progresses the more the usage of disposable products. Look around you, probably 80% of products you use are the disposable kind. So, if we are waiting around for someone to solve environmental issues for us, then it’s not likely to happen. The problem is not someone else but us, unless we change our ways, the problems which have resulted from our desire for conveniences are not going away any time soon.

Each one of us could take a minute, review our dependency on disposable products, and cut back. Something as simple as washing and reusing a spoon can go along way. But remember karma, when we change our ways, it will impact things both in a good and a bad way. So if today we all stop using disposable spoons, then naturally, industries which produce these products will go out of business, people will lose jobs, and there will economic and social impacts. So when people say wash a spoon and reuse it, the impact of that action, in the big picture, is not as simple as it looks.

Another thing I have noticed is we sometimes justify use of disposable products by using recycling as an excuse. Well, when you get a chance, go to a landfill near you, and you will get a good idea of how much recycling actually goes on.

If you want to make a difference, make changes to your dependency on disposable products today, and show others that they can do it too.

Moment of Zen

“Everywhere is walking distance if you have the time.”
- Steven Wright

World’s Oldest Dad

Nanu Ram Jogi, a 90 year old farmer from Rajasthan, who already holds the world’s oldest father title, has fathered another child.

“Women love me,” Mr Jogi said. “I want to have more children. I can survive another few decades and want to have children till I am 100 - then maybe I will stop.”

With rock solid genes as that of Nanu Ram Jogi contributing, looks like we are going to be improving on our birthrate of—1 person born every 1.3 seconds!

via Daily Mail